#222: Starbucks Odyssey is Going Places

PLUS: 🕶️ Pit Viper Shades interacts with a shitcoin community

TPan makes a confession

I’ll admit, ever since I joined the web3-powered Starbucks Odyssey loyalty program, my behavior with the brand changed…a lot. I’ve:

• Downloaded the Starbucks Rewards app

• Topped up my Starbucks app rewards card multiple times

• Worked at a local Starbucks on Fridays for a change of scenery…and to complete outstanding Odyssey activities

• Reminded my fiancee countless times to complete her outstanding journeys and activities

• Created a weekly reminder

Not to mention, I’ve participated in multiple Stamp drops, spending hundreds of dollars in the process. It’s for research purposes though! 🧐

This is probably a result of not having kids (or a life) but I have to say, I’m probably not the only person that’s changed their Starbucks behavior due to Odyssey. Fortunately, being an active Odyssey participant provides some unique insights into where I believe the future of loyalty is headed.

Odyssey’s Going Places Journey

Last week, Odyssey launched a journey: Going Places. The theme for this journey was to encourage members to explore different Starbucks locations.

The activity that caught my eye was ‘Explore Your Stores’.

Cool. Simple activity encouraging members to visit different Starbucks locations and make a qualifying purchase. Standard loyalty program stuff 🥱

But the section below the description was the interesting part.

This activity had an additional community challenge component. If 8,000 unique US Starbucks stores were visited by the end of the year, the whole community would receive a bonus. This goal was met in one week (the challenge launched July 26th).

For context, is 8,000 stores a lot? I would say so.

• Starbucks has 16,144 stores in the US. 8,000 is effectively 50% of all Starbucks stores in the US

• Goals are meant to be simultaneously aspirational and achievable. I don’t think the Odyssey team intended for this goal to be reached in a week.

If I were on the Odyssey team, I would call this an outright success one week in. And after a few brief moments of celebration, I would want to understand the following:

• Did members change their Starbucks location behavior and go to more locations than normal because of the journey? If so, by how much?

• Did members order the different items at different locations? If so, what did they order?

• Once enough time has passed: Are any members consistently going to these new locations as a result of this journey? This can be determined through a pre/post analysis and with a larger sample set.

• What does it look like to create a Part 2 of this challenge? Increase the goal to 15,000 unique locations with the same deadline and see what happens. If the goal is reached, provide another reward to the community, with special rewards to the top 10 members that visit the most Starbucks locations.

An example of the last point is my new ‘work from Starbucks’ Friday ritual. I go to a Starbucks that is 10 minutes away from me despite having a few other options that are only about a 5-minute drive away. Why?

It’s a larger store, has plenty of tables and outlets for working, and I enjoy the communal vibe that location has (diverse groups of people, multiple groups of elderly folks sitting down and catching up with each other). This wasn’t due to the Explore Your Stores activity, but other members may stumble upon a similar discovery by visiting new Starbucks stores.

Odyssey’s community is doing things

The real cherry on top was the community itself once they learned about the Community Challenge.

One member took it upon themselves to create a map of the locations that were visited. They shared a Google Form and fellow community members opted in, sharing their visit details.

Friendly competition was also a natural side effect of the Community Challenge. Members dug into the website code and were able to identify the exact number of unique stores that were visited by state.

Screenshot taken last week. Numbers are much higher now.

The power of synchronous community engagement

Creating a community is hard. Maintaining a community is harder. Maintaining a community that is based on offline interactions (eg: brick and mortar retail) is even harder.

However, it seems Starbucks Odyssey has found a tactic that seems to drive positive business results, is engaging the community in novel ways, and is replicable + scalable.

Community challenges in a vacuum aren’t new, regardless of online (see Twitch subathons) or offline (community fundraisers). Starbucks Rewards already has challenges to incentivize purchase behavior as well.

From an e-mail I received today

However, bolting on community challenges to an already world-class loyalty program gets interesting. Odyssey is adding a new dimension to how Starbucks is building their community from an obvious online dimension and combining it with a less obvious dimension of synchronicity.

Community challenges in this form aren’t synchronous in the sense that everyone’s going to buy coffee at the exact same time, but this can be measured (eg: a hypothetical metric around store visits per hour or per day before and after the goal is reached. Store visit density? Store visit velocity?).

Additionally, I believe synchronous online events like community challenges increase the size of the loyalty program itself. A visual I introduced in one of my previous pieces on Starbucks Odyssey evolves even further.

If I were Starbucks executive in charge of Odyssey, I would take showcase this Community Challenge as a prime example of achieving the company’s mission statement:

Odyssey and Community Challenges have the potential to turn that statement into a reality, even in online environments.

I noticed these stats earlier today in the benefits section of the Odyssey dashboard. This was from the first benefits selection period in late April which lasted a week. I expect participant volume to be a lot higher and Day 1 claim engagement to be in a similar range.

One benefit option was to donate 50 meals, meaning ~2,500 members chose that benefit

Pit Viper Shades engages with a shitcoin

Expect to lose some brain cells with this segment, but also read about an unique case study of how a brand is interacting with a crypto community.

If you thought shitcoin season (the penny stocks of crypto) was over, I’m sorry to disappoint. They’re still around, and some are arguably even thriving. One coin that has popped up over the last couple of weeks is MOG.

Like many other coins, MOG’s growth strategy consists of viral memes and a community that is motivated to make price go up.

Ready?

Source

The common denominator for all these memes? The shades.

Source

These shades are not some random AI-generated creation. They’re Pit Viper Shades. This sunglasses/shades brand is a torchbearer of modern-day brand irreverence. Think Liquid Death but more aggressive and meme-heavy. I mean…look at their e-mail signup pop-up modal 😂

Peep that cat with the shades

And their ‘Back 2 Skool’ sale? Up to 69% off.

As a result, the company has gained a loyal following, with 900k IG followers, 309k Tiktok followers, and 23k Twitter followers.

I imagine the MOG creators were inspired by the brand and are Pit Viper fans. And today, Pit Viper finally took the bait on Twitter, which ended up being one of their most engaged tweets in the past several months.

Seeing the influx of engagement and memes in the replies, the social media manager continued to play along and see how far this could go.

The MOG community was not to be underestimated.

And it did not stop. The pizzas kept coming and coming and coming.

In the case of MOG and Pit Viper, it was a match made in heaven. Pit Viper was built on irreverence and memes and embraced MOG, if only for a day.

So if you’re a large brand and a community (especially a crypto/web3 one) starts using your brand assets. Don’t run for the legal team, see if you can make some magic from it. You never know what might happen. 🍕

See you next week!